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The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity


from its origins to circa AD 700, across the entire Christian world


Venantius Fortunatus, in his verse Life of Martin (4.686-701), sends his book to a shrine of *Martin (ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397, S00050) in the church of *Iohannes and Paulus (brothers and eunuchs, martyrs in Rome under Julian 00384) in Ravenna (northern Italy), where there was an image of Martin and a lamp burning by it; many years earlier Fortunatus' eyes had been cured with oil from this lamp. Written in Latin in Poitiers (north-west Gaul), 573/576.

Evidence ID

E08483

Type of Evidence

Literary - Hagiographical - Lives

Major author/Major anonymous work

Venantius Fortunatus

Venantius Fortunatus, Life of Martin 4.686-701

Expete Martini loculum quo iure sacelli
iam desperatum lumen mihi reddidit auctor.
Munera qui tribuit saltim rogo, verba repende.
Est ubi basilicae culmen Pauli atque Iohannis,
hic paries retinet sancti sub imagine formam: 690
amplectenda ipso dulci pictura colore.
Sub pedibus iusti paries habet arte fenestram:
lychnus adest, cuius vitrea natat ignis in urna.
Huc ego dum propero, valido torquente dolore,
diffugiente gemens oculorum luce fenestris, 695
quo procul ut tetigi benedicto lumen olivo,
igneus ille vapor marcenti fronte recessit
et praesens medicus blando fugat unguine morbos.
Non oblita mihi mea lumina munere sancti,
nam redit ante oculos oculorum cura fidelis, 700
et memor illud ero dum luce et corpore consto.


'Seek Martin’s altar, where, thanks to his shrine, the Creator, against my expectations, gave me back my sight. Repay with words, at least, the one who granted such grace. Where the lofty basilica of *Paulus and Iohannes [brothers and eunuchs, martyrs of Rome under the emperor Julian, S00384] stands, there a wall retains the portrait of the saint in the shape of an icon: (690) the image is to be embraced with its most sweet colour. At the feet of the righteous man, the wall has an artfully placed window. There is a lamp, whose fire floats in a glassy vessel. While I hurry towards it ‒ the severe pain is excruciating, (695) ‒ groaning as the light flees from the windows of my eyes, as soon as I touched my eye with the blessed oil, that burning exhalation vanished away from my withering face and that (spiritually) present physician wards off diseases with soothing ointment. My eyes did not forget the saint’s grace, (700) for the faithful healing of my eyes returns before my very eyes, and I will remember this as long as I remain in my flesh and sight.'


Text: Kay 2020; Quesnel 2002 (1996
1).
Translation: L. Livorsi.

Cult Places

Cult building - independent (church)
Cult building - dependent (chapel, baptistery, etc.)

Use of Images

Praying before an image

Non Liturgical Activity

Pilgrimage

Miracles

Miracle after death
Healing diseases and disabilities

Relics

Contact relic - oil

Cult Related Objects

Oil lamps/candles

Source

Venantius Fortunatus was born in northern Italy, near Treviso, and educated at Ravenna. In the early 560s he crossed the Alps into Merovingian Gaul, where he spent the rest of his life, making his living primarily through writing Latin poetry for the aristocracy of northern Gaul, both secular and ecclesiastical. His first datable commission in Gaul is a poem to celebrate the wedding in 566 of the Austrasian royal couple, Sigibert and Brunhild. His principal patrons were *Radegund (S00182) and Agnes, the royal founder and the first abbess of the monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers, as well as Gregory, the historian and bishop of Tours, Leontius, bishop of Bordeaux, and Felix, bishop of Nantes, but he also wrote poems for several kings and for many other members of the aristocracy. In addition to occasional poems for his patrons, Fortunatus wrote this four-book epic poem about Martin of Tours, and several works of prose and verse hagiography. The latter part of his life was spent in Poitiers, and in the 590s he became bishop of the city; he is presumed to have died early in the 7th century. For Fortunatus' life, see Brennan 1985; George 1992, 18-34; Reydellet 1994-2004, vol. 1, vii-xxviii; Di Brazzano 2001, 15-38; Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 801-22, 'Fortunatus'.

Fortunatus' Life of Martin - the circumstances of its composition and its date:

Fortunatus composed his
Vita Sancti Martini (VSM) at the behest of Radegund and Agnes, as he makes clear in the verse preface in elegiac couplets addressed to these aristocratic nuns:

Sic ego de modicis minimus, venerabilis Agnes
cum Radegunde sacra, quas colo sorte pia,
tendere pollicitum quia cogor ad ardua gressum,
imperiis tantis viribus impar agor.

'Thus I, the smallest of the small, O venerable Agnes and holy Radegund, whom I respectfully revere, because I am obliged to forge a path to the heights as I promised, am driven on by your weighty command, unsuited by my capabilities though I am.'

(Ven. Fort.,
Mart. praef. II 27–30. Translation: Kay 2020, 45, lightly modified)

In addition, one manuscript (Vat. Pal. Lat. 845 = N) transmits a prose letter to Gregory of Tours usually regarded as a dedication letter (although this idea is challenged by Kay 2020, 2-4). Hence, the terminus post quem must fall around Gregory’s accession to the episcopal see of Tours in September 573 (whether in early 573 on in late 573, depending on how one interprets the letter itself). A definite terminus ante quem is provided by the death of Germanus, bishop of Paris, in April 576, who is referred to as still alive in VSM 4.637.

Beside Radegund and Agnes’ concrete request to turn Sulpicius Severus’ VSM and
Dialogues into epic poetry (roughly one century after Paulinus of Périgueux had done the same - see E06355), Fortunatus presents a more personal reason for devoting this ambitious poem to Martin. In the concluding envoi, Fortunatus addresses the personified book and invites it to go on a pilgrimage to several martyrial sites on a route from Tours to his home city of Ravenna. The book’s travels culminate (in the passage described here) in Martin’s chapel in the Ravennate church of Iohannes and Paulus [Chiesa dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo], where, years earlier, Fortunatus touched his ailing eyes with the oil used in a lamp burning before an image of Martin painted on the wall, and his sight was restored (VSM 4.686-701). In addition, the concluding sections of books 2, 3 and 4 are punctuated with Fortunatus’ prayers for Martin to intercede on behalf of his sins (2.468-490, 3.520-528, 4.594-620). Thus, Fortunatus’ VSM constitutes a poetic devotional offering.

Manuscript transmission:

For a thorough discussion of the manuscript transmission of Fortunatus’ VSM and the establishment of the text, see Leo 1881, xxii-xxiii; Quesnel 2002, lxxv-lxxxiii; and Kay 2020, 23-37: despite including new manuscripts each, their stemmata do not differ substantially. I confine myself to pointing out that the manuscripts fall roughly into two categories: 1) anthologies of texts centred on Martin of Tours, alongside Sulpicius Severus, Paulinus of Périguex, Gregory of Tours, and the epigraphic sylloge of Tours, 2) miscellaneous anthologies, alongside Fortunatus’
Carmina and other late antique Christian poetry, the most extravagant being arguably P (Petropolitanus F XIV 1), which has a remarkably different arrangement from any other manuscript. Thus, the different text arrangement of the manuscripts reflects varying interests in the subject matter. In addition, there is evidence of lost manuscripts, such as the Treverensis upon which Christoph Brower based his 1607 edition of Fortunatus, which included not only the VSM, but also the prose letter to Gregory of Tours that is currently transmitted by just one other manuscript.

Discussion

For an overview entry on Fortunatus' Life of Martin, with a discussion of its character and full bibliography, see E08349.

As discussed above, this passage constitutes the culmination of Fortunatus’ account of his personified book's travels back to his native Ravenna, and explains his particular devotion to Martin. The story Fortunatus tells of his own healing is succinctly followed by his friend and colleague Gregory of Tours, in his
Miracles of Martin 1.15 (E02863), and later by Paul the Deacon (Historia Langobardorum 2.13), though with slight modifications.

Martin is the one Gallic saint with well documented cult in Italy; shortly before Fortunatus wrote his
Life of Martin, the saint was honoured in Ravenna by being depicted leading the procession of male saints in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo (E06046). From Fortunatus' account of the image of Martin in the church of Iohannes and Paulus, it is clear that it was the subject of cult, with a lamp burning before it and the ability to attract private devotion and private prayer.

Bibliography

Editions:
Di Brazzano, S. (ed.),
Venanzio Fortunato. Opere/1 (Roma: Città Nuova, 2001).

Leo, F.,
Venanti Honorii Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri italici opera poetica, (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 4.1: Berlin, 1881).

Quesnel, S.,
Venance Fortunat, Œuvres IV. La Vie de Saint Martin, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996; 2nd edition 2002). [With French translation]

Translations:
Fels, W.,
Venantius Fortunatus: Vita Sancti Martini - Das Leben des Heiligen Martin (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, Mittellateinische Bibliothek 2, 2020).

Mazzoccato, G., V
enanzio Fortunato: Vita di San Martino (Treviso: Piazza, 2005).

Palermo, G. (1995),
Venanzio Fortunato: Vita di San Martino di Tours (Rome: Città Nuova, Collana di testi patristici 57, 1995).

Further reading:
de Nie, G., (1997), "The poet as visionary: Venantius Fortunatus’ “new mantle” for Saint Martin," Cassiodorus 3, 49-83 [reprinted in: de Nie, Word, Image and Experience: dynamics of miracle and self-perception in sixth-century Gaul (Variorum collected studies 773; Aldershot, 2003), 49-83].

Labarre, S.,
Le manteau partagé. Deux métamorphoses poétiques de la Vie de Saint Martin chez Paulin de Périgueux (Ve siècle) et Venance Fortunat (VIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998).

Livorsi, L.,
Venantius Fortunatus’ Life of St Martin: Verse Hagiography between Epic and Panegyric (Bari: Edipuglia, 2023).

Roberts, M., "The Last Epic of Antiquity: Generic Continuity and Innovation in the
Vita Sancti Martini of Venantius Fortunatus," Transactions of the American Philological Association 131 (2001), 257-285.

Roberts, M., "Venantius Fortunatus’ Life of St. Martin,"
Traditio 57 (2002), 129-187.

Rosada, Guido, "Il “viaggio” di Venanzio Fortunato
ad Turones: il tratto di Ravenna ai Breonum loca e la strada per submontana castella," in T. Ragusa and B. Termite (eds.), Venanzio Fortunato tra Italia e Francia. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi. Valdobbiadene, 17 maggio 1990-Treviso, 18-19 maggio 1990 (Treviso: Provincia di Treviso, 1993), 25-57.

Rosada, G., "Venanzio Fortunato e le vie della devozione," in
Venanzio Fortunato e il suo tempo (Treviso: Fondazione Cassamarca, 2003), 331-362.


Record Created By

Lorenzo Livorsi

Date of Entry

09/08/2023

Related Saint Records
IDNameName in SourceIdentity
S00050Martin, ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397MartinusCertain
S00384Iohannes and Paulus, brothers and eunuchs, martyrs of Rome under the emperor JulianIohannes et PaulusCertain


Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Lorenzo Livorsi, Cult of Saints, E08483 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E08483